How I envision it is a 12-player tiered system similar to the P/R league. 3 up, 3 down which also keeps each season different in opponents, but allows people to work their way up. The P/R system is definitely the way to go in terms of balanced competition and avoiding bad teammates.

Edited 10/15/2015 18:17:55

i like the concept of a promo/Relegation league. but the rule that you Need to start from scratch if you don't Play one season is stupid. i could join and get booted and would lose less than i do when i'm honest and say that i can't Play.

What if you could reserve a spot for 1 season? For example, if you were in the top 16 and didn't wanted to skip one, you could have 4 people move up and next season, 4 move down to compensate. The only thing is that it could only be max one season. It may get complicated but I do not see an other alternative.

yeah, i left promo league in division C. came back after a season off, started in H :(

I don't know how you make that work though in promo environment though. If you hold a spot and come back, what happens with people already in division? You displace them? Seems very messy.

Another option is you just seed everyone based on total points earned in league from start. So you'd climb from earning points, but then if you leave for a season you don't start at 0, just where you left off (but other people would have gotten points the season you missed). So you might drop a division or something.

Holding slots is a pain, as you can see from 1v1 promo league. I think it would be easier to just do total points career in league. Top 12, next 12, etc.

Career pts would be unique to this league too as I am not aware of anyone else doing that. I have also never like how someone going 6-0 in B moves up 1 spot and someone winning H with a 3-2 record moves up 1 (or more if there are drop outs).

Edited 10/15/2015 18:48:49

But you have to do something to start it out (divisions). Not sure if you assign like JSA did. Vote with a panel. Make it all random and let it sort out on own for league 2.

Hasn't the 20 league always been an invitational toruney? In that case, so it shall remain.

There is already a promotion/relegation league, I think there's no reason for 20 to become a copy of that

I assume JSA would continue having invites only.

I really, really like the idea of career statistics. It's something we are now doing in our league here (sports league but same idea).

As for the invitational only, from what I know, 20 started out as 20 great players all playing games against each other. Once the 20 league started, there was so much interest along came 20A, 20B, 20C, etc. all the way to proving grounds. How is that not a P/R league?

It may be a different name but the idea is still the same. As well, if it's invite only, you lose out on finding great new players that weren't invited. Just my honest opinion.

I think people are a little confused what the original intent of 20 was. It was to take 20 interesting players and play different formats and different templates to broaden understanding of Warlight as a whole, as such they originally played templates that were brand new and invited not just players based on their skill level, but based on how they played stylistically.

We don't do that anymore. The 3 templates we had were Strat ME 0% WR, Strat ME 2v2 0% SR, and Europe 3v3. That's boring as hell. I played mainly because I found 20B to have really interesting players as a whole (MotD, Bjarke, BraaK, Oh Noes, GreenTea, I had at the start not played many games against them), but the templates were boring. I didn't expend any effort playing the 3v3 and neither did my partners, probably because we were all burned out on playing Europe 3v3 on a competitive level so we just picked and didn't talk unless we needed a transfer or attack for expansion. So if we're to continue the league, let's rotate templates, teammates, and do something more original. Let's actually think up new innovative templates, and add people based on their stylistic differences.

It is atm, a competitive P/R League with confusing rules on promotions/relegations, boring templates, and some players who are absolutely burned out/bored with the format.

Edited 10/15/2015 22:49:34

So if we're to continue the league, let's rotate templates, teammates, and do something more original. Let's actually think up new innovative templates, and add people based on their stylistic differences.

+1

This is the essence of what I was trying to get at. The community as a whole is more involved than what it once was. Instead of being dominated by top players, everyone is contributing more so they should be included. Have something like 3 or 4 solid templates, and then at the end of a season, the template that was used becomes ineligible for the next season and is replaced with a new template. Keeps it up to date with templates and not always Start ME or Europe.

To address the confusing rules on P/R, you can just go career stats.

It is easy to rotate templates on 1v1 and 2v2 because there are many templates that are close to the same level on each. But on 3v3, I have yet to see one that many top team players would consider close to Europe's level. I'll speak a lot more about your ideas in a couple days; I don't have enough time today to address them all.

The new proposed format just has too many games. It is going to be administrative hell and once the initial enthusiasm fades, no one will schedule so many games.

I really love playing the Promotion/ Relegation every season. In my opinion a league needs to end quickly. If it takes 4-6 months, you can barely remember who you were playing with! An active player today, could easily go inactive during such a long season impacting the whole league.

Turns out I have more time tonight than I thought I would so I'll answer the concerns voiced here.

Master Ree:
1. Vetoing will ideally be done with one player vetoing a template at a time, however I see the problems with this. This can be easily figured out later on when I see how players are feeling on templates.

2. I also am not sure about the idea of forcing alts, yet this is only for the top 25% of each group. I am thinking that perhaps a way to solve this would be to allow players to play with teammates in a division lower than their current one. This means that they are likely doing most of the work for the team, rather than being carried by superior teammates. It would be up to each individual player whether they'd rather play with alts or players that are ranked as inferior to them in terms of skill.

3. A three-way tie would be decided by a Strategic 1v1 Round Robin between the three players. If all three win once, we'd try a second round robin. If all three win once again, we will switch to an elimination style where one random player gets a bye in the first round. I figure that if they have tied in the actual competition and twice in round robins, they are all very close to the same skill level, and the best way to decide this is by adding a bit of chance rather than playing an infinite number of round robins.

4. Promotions and Relegations will be discussed before the season starts for sure, but at the current time I am unsure on this. I am leaning towards allowing any player to advance out of Round 1 to be able to stay in Group A. Then in the other groups, the top four promote to the next group, and the bottom eight relegate to the lower group. Open spots will be filled by the decisions by a group of players (like Sze, Gnuff, Timi, etc.). For instance, if a player from Group C is deemed as good enough for Group A, he will be added to Group A, and a player who will otherwise play Group D will take his spot. This guarantees twelve spots in each division that will be filled by players who have show they belong there, with the option to add four more. However, there could be more promotions from Group B to Group A depending on who is deemed as "good enough". While this system does have some subjectivity, 75% of the players in each group are decided based on their performance in the previous season. This means that high level players won't have to start at low groups, but it also means that underrated players have a way to earn their way to Group A.

Turtle: See #1 for Master Ree

Beren: I don't like the idea of a Swiss style because a player could lose his first five games, play against five easy opponents and get back to .500, while a superior player beats his first five opponents, but must face top players, and ends up losing his next five, also ending back at .500. I think a Swiss style tournament is fun, but for determining who is the strongest player, it is not a good way to do this. I think some kind of Swiss style league/tournament would be a fun thing to do in the future though, especially if Fizzer were to implement it into warlight.

Chris: I will make the games for Group A. I calculated last night and I believe it was around 120 games. This may sound like a lot, but to make this tournament succeed, I would gladly do it. For lower divisions, someone else will be in charge of creating games. A possible way to simplify the making of the games may be to just cut out the vetoing idea, and instead force players to play in two different Round Robin 1v1 tournaments. I don't like this idea as much but it would cut the games that need to be created if necessary.

Turtle: This is an idea, but I think many players would prefer a combination of the two.

Mod/Ree: Point 4 on the first Master Ree response. It will be loosely promotion/relegation while also allowing top players to go instantly to Group A.

Lolowut: I agree a lot on templates. The templates were voted on the past two seasons by [20A] members. I have seen one unusual template used and this became a fiasco (Ursa Luna 3v3). Szeweningen also used a very unusual template in the Champion's League last time for 2v2 and this is the reason many players quit. I think if we decide to pick the templates for each tournament (rather than letting players veto), it will not be the most standard templates but it will likely be at least similar to what players have played before. In general, high level players do not wish to play competitive events on a completely new template (I don't like this, but it is the truth, and I want a large percentage of high level players to participate in this event). I will ask Szeweningen and Gui to help come up with some new templates for this competition that while not completely new to the high-level players, it will be different enough that they cannot coast on past knowledge of the template.

Hope this clears some things up; please keep asking questions and voicing opinions.

I'm not saying we use an untested template, but there's definitely templates out there that have been deemed strategic and are new that we can use. (Atlantis 1v1, Final Earth 2v2 with 4 starts, not that new but not played much, RoR 3v3, I could list more.) This season lineup was as vanilla as possible. Idk if I'm the only one burned out on the same old, but I'd like to see the league go back to what the purpose was, to diversify how we think and bring us together with interesting/new players. The 2nd part happens and doesn't, depending on the group. The 1st part didn't happen this season with the vanilla.

Edited 10/16/2015 06:24:54

I don't find these templates you mentioned interesting. Who deemed them strategic? Final earth 2v2 with 4 picks still has no dominant picks often. I think maybe with two recon cards to start the game, it may become less about guesses and more about skill, but if it's the same as the ladder settings with the only change being four picks per player, I don't think it is a good idea for high level players. I also find Rise of Rome 3v3 easy to understand and not worth the huge amount of time that goes into playing it. It is repetitive, games last forever, and it is not as complex as Europe. Atlantis 1v1 I don't know if I've ever seen. The point is, if new templates are used, they need to be on par with the best templates or only a small step down in terms of strategy and complexity and time taken to finish a game. I'd like to here some more of your ideas for templates. I think for 1v1, it will be easy to find a template that is strategic and somewhat complex, but for 2v2 and 3v3, it may be tougher.

Edited 10/16/2015 13:19:27

The Strat 1v1 on ME with WR regularly doesn't have dominant picks, but that's no argument for saying that it is not a strategic template. I don't see how failing to have dominant picks is an argument against a template being strategic - it just means you have to win with gameplay, rather than picks, which is a good thing in my opinion.

I really enjoyed this season's templates, but since I am a new player I had never played the 3v3 EU and the 2v2 ME before, so they were completely new for me and I found them amazing.

If you want to talk about boring 3v3 templates, the RoR 3v3 lolo mentioned is one of them without a doubt, and I find the China 2v2 much better than the Final Earth one (but maybe China is old and overplayed too)

actually china isn't old or overplayed, we never played it in any important event unless i remember wrong.

Jsa didn't mentioned the option that basically you that Group stage 2 with the points you neded Group stage 1. So if you win all your games in stage 1, you will start with 12 points, respect a player went 10-2 he will start with 10 points. I think it is fait to incentive since Group stage 1 to play your best. It work like that in volleyball.

Edited 10/16/2015 14:42:23

china 2vs2 was played in the previous clan league

China 2vs2 is cool. bring it!